On the fourth and final day of the Cape Town Book Fair visitors continued to flock to the fair.

A steady stream of people waiting to buy entrance tickets snaked around the ticket booths, with many making return visits to catch up on what they had missed on their first visit.

"It really was a case of a city being transformed by words," said Cape Town Book Fair Director Vanessa Badroodien.

"We are very happy with the number of people who have been through the fair and with the discussions and talks that have taken place and have been packed to capacity."

The fair is both a trade event, with publishers and agents from around the world coming to do business, and a public event people have taken to their hearts, attending in their thousands.

At the fair the Chairman of Publishers Association of South Africa, Dudley Schroeder, announced that South Africa has been chosen as the focus country for the London Book Fair in 2010.

Speaking at an event on Monday night Schroeder said that the PASA was "very excited about the opportunity that this honour offered to South African publishers, writers, and those in the book trade to showcase the best of South African literature and publishing to the rest of the world.

"Make sure you book your space early," said Schroeder.

"This is one event that you really don’t want to miss out on."

Badroodien said: "Based on preliminary figures I am very pleased that we have exceeded them.

"The important thing for us is that we have seen a definite increase in value that both the public and exhibitors have told us they have experienced. We believe that we now have a sustainable number of visitors — too much growth in numbers has been shown internationally to be a recipe for exhibitions becoming unsustainable."

See Zoopy's coverage: